Southern African Fictions and Factions

Submitted by ldzoells on Wed, 2017-03-22 10:06

ENGL / CRES

Undergraduate

Winter

2017-2018

Loren Kruger

This course examines the intersection of narrative in print and film (fiction and documentary) in Southern Africa since mid-20th Century decolonization. We begin with Cry, the Beloved Country, a best seller written by South African Alan Paton while in the US, and the original film version by a Hungarian-born British-based director (Zoltan Korda), and an American screenwriter (John Howard Lawson), which together show both the international impact of South African stories and the important elements missed by overseas audiences. We will continue with fictional and non-fictional narrative responses to apartheid and decolonization in film and in print, and examine the power and the limits of what critic Louise Bethlehem has called the "rhetoric of urgency" on local and international audiences. We will conclude with writing and film that grapples with the complexities of the post-apartheid world, whose challenges, from crime and corruption to AIDS and the particular problems faced by women and gender minorities, elude the heroic formulas of the anti-apartheid struggle era. Prerequisites: second-year or higher status, HUM Core, plus either Intro to Film or Intro to Novel.

Balkan Folklore

Submitted by isagor on Mon, 2017-11-13 11:22

Undergraduate

Winter

2017-2018

Angelina Ilieva

Vampires, fire-breathing dragons, vengeful mountain nymphs. 7/8 and other uneven dance beats, heart-rending laments, and a living epic tradition. This course is an overview of Balkan folklore from historical, political, and anthropological perspectives. We seek to understand folk tradition as a dynamic process and consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. We also experience this living tradition firsthand through visits of a Chicago-based folk dance ensemble, “Balkan Dance.”

Comparative Methods in the Humanities

Submitted by ldzoells on Wed, 2017-03-22 09:18

20109

Undergraduate

Autumn

2017-2018

Olga Solovieva

This course introduces the models of comparative analysis across national literatures, genres, and media. The texts to be discussed include Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” and Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”; Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” Kafka’s “Josephine the Mouse Singer,” Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller; Victor Segalen’s Stèles; Fenollosa and Pound’s “The Chinese Character as a Medium of Poetry” and Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei; Mérimée, “Carmen,” Bizet, Carmen, and the film adaptation U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (South Africa, 2005); Gorky’s and Kurosawa’s “Lower Depths;” Molière, Tartuffe, Dostoevsky, The Village Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants, and Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”; Gogol, The Overcoat, and Boris Eikhenbaum, “How Gogol’s Overcoat Is Made.”

Comparative Methods in the Humanities

Submitted by jenniequ on Thu, 2016-06-02 16:06

20109

Undergraduate

Winter

2016-2017

Olga Solovieva

This course introduces the models of comparative analysis across national literatures, genres, and media. The texts to be discussed include Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” and Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”; Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” Kafka’s “Josephine the Mouse Singer,” Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller; Victor Segalen’s Stèles; Fenollosa and Pound’s “The Chinese Character as a Medium of Poetry” and Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei; Mérimée, “Carmen,” Bizet, Carmen, and the film adaptation U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (South Africa, 2005); Gorky’s and Kurosawa’s “Lower Depths;” Molière, Tartuffe, Dostoevsky, The Village Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants, and Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”; Gogol, The Overcoat, and Boris Eikhenbaum, “How Gogol’s Overcoat Is Made.”

Writing the Jewish Body: Health, Disease, Literature

Submitted by vickylim on Fri, 2015-05-15 10:30

20222

JWSC 20222

Undergraduate

Winter

2015-2016

Sunny Yudkoff

This course investigates the representation of the Jewish body in twentieth-century prose. We will focus on the European, American and Israeli contexts, exploring how the figures of health and illness are mobilized as commentaries on Jewish identity. We will also consider how representations of physical strength, physiological frailty, contagion and susceptibility shift in different landscapes and in different languages, paying particular attention to such figures as the ailing shtetl dweller, the Central European Jewish patient and the Zionist “New Jew.” Readings include works by Mendele Mocher Sforim, Franz Kafka, Philip Roth and Orly Castel-Bloom in conversation with theoretical texts by Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin and Arthur Kleinman. All readings are in English. A section may be organized for reading sources in Yiddish.

Multilingualism and Translation in Modern Jewish Literature

Submitted by vickylim on Thu, 2015-05-14 13:50

20225

JWSC 20225

Undergraduate

Spring

2015-2016

Na'ama Rokem

Covering the period roughly between 1880 and 1980, this course touches on some of the transformations and upheavals that have formed modern Jewish culture: waves of migration, modernization, and assimilation; the rise of Jewish nationalism and the foundation of the State of Israel; and the Holocaust. Our driving questions will be: How do these different revolutions and upheavals influence the dynamic relations between the different languages in which Jews speak and write? What is the role of translation in Jewish culture? What do we learn from the Jewish case about language politics more broadly? How should we theorize and describe the monolingual ideologies that are dominant in the modern West? And how should we read bilingual literature?

Contemporary Drama: Alienation and Cruelty

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

20300

=ENGL 24502

Undergraduate

Spring

2006-2007

Jonathan Ullyot

Course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students majoring in Comparative Literature. This course will take as its starting point two radical positions that rethink the nature and purpose of theatricality in the 20th Century: Brecht's idea of the alienation-effect and Artaud's theatre of cruelty. It will look at recent playwrights influenced by this tradition, including Heiner Müller, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Valère Novarina, Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Athol Fugard and Jon Fosse. Close attention will be given to how these plays are self-conscious of their own theatricality, and how this self-consciousness is related to these dramas' political message, their investigation into subjectivity, and their violence. All texts will be read in English, but students with knowledge of French or German will be encouraged to read the texts in the original.

Tragedy in Early Modern Spain and England

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

20400

=ENGL 16708, SPAN 22001

Undergraduate

Winter

2008-2009

Kathryn Swanton

Course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students majoring in Comparative Literature. Early modern England and Golden Age Spain built thriving public theaters that broke away from the confines of neoclassicism to create some of the seminal tragedies of western civilization. As we compare the development of the public theater in both countries during the 17th century, and trace their shared Senecan heritage, we will also consider their distinct treatment of women in the performance space, and the nations' opposing Protestant and Catholic orientations. Plays from the two national theaters will be paired according to the themes of revenge, desengao , female power, and damnation as represented in tragedies by Lope de Vega and Middleton, Shakespeare and Caldern, Webster and Claramonte, and Shadwell and Tirso. The class will use English translations of the Spanish plays, but readers of Spanish will be encouraged to read the Spanish texts in the original. Spanish concentrators taking this course for their major will be required to read texts in the original Spanish.

Monstrosity and the Monstrous

Submitted by jenniequ on Mon, 2016-03-21 13:12

20505

Undergraduate

Spring

2016-2017

Pablo Maurette

This course centers on the relationship between literature and science by focusing on the figure of the monster. The human imagination can produce the most outlandish forms: we will call this the monstrous. Natural philosophy and science, on the other hand, have to deal with the deformed, the organically distorted, the preternatural: we will call this monstrosity. Both concepts can spark thrilling debates on identity and difference, divine providence and chance, fear and lust, gender, race, and more. In a journey that takes us from antiquity to the 21st century, we will be looking at ancient history and literature, Medieval bestiaries, Renaissance scientific treatises, plays, nineteen and twentieth-century novels, evolutionary biology, theory, philosophy, and film.

Translation and Translation Theory

Submitted by jenniequ on Mon, 2016-03-21 13:13

20510

Undergraduate

Spring

2016-2017

Haun Saussy

Translation is one of the central mechanisms of literary creativity. This course will consider translation both concretely and theoretically. Topics to be discussed will include semantic and grammatical interference, loss and gain, the production of difference, pidgin, translationese, bilingualism, self-translation, code-switching, translation as metaphor, foreignization vs. nativization, and distinct histories of translation.

Introduction to Drama: Adventures in Time and Space

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2014-12-08 09:57

20601

ENGL 10600, TAPS 19300

Undergraduate

Winter

2014-2015

John Muse

This course introduces students to key concepts and interpretive tools to read and understand drama both as text and as performance. Students will learn to read and watch plays and performances closely, taking into account form, character, plot and genre, but also conventions of staging, acting, and spectatorship across historical time and geographic space. Through close reading, theater research, and trips to performances, we will consider how various agents—playwrights, directors, actors, and audiences—generate plays and give them meaning. Essential plays from a range of times and places: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon, Strindberg, Ibsen, Wilder, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Parks, McCraney.

Fictional Minds: The Representation of Consciousness in the European Novel

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2013-03-18 13:52

20663

SCTH 20663,ENGL 20663

Undergraduate

Spring

2012-2013

James McCormick

Through readings of texts by Goethe, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Woolf, Musil, and Zadie Smith, this course will examine the range of formal techniques for representing minds during different eras in the history of the European novel. We will ask how different modes of narrating fictional minds reveal underlying (and shifting) models of human subjectivity and how these models, in turn, structure our own reading practices and our interpretation of characters. The literary readings will be supplemented with secondary texts that will introduce students to the tools and concerns of classical narratology as well as to contemporary development in cognitive literary studies. Theoretical authors will include: Gerard Genette, Dorrit Cohn, Erich Auerbach, Monika Fudernik, Mikhail Bakhtin, Alan Palmer, Lisa Zunshine, and David Lodge.

Brecht and Beyond

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2013-03-18 13:11

20800

ENGL 24400, CMST 26200, TAPS 28435

Undergraduate

Winter

2013-2014

Loren Kruger

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht’s own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920’s to the agitprop Lehrstück to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Soyinka, Ngugi, and various South African theatre practitioners). We will also consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht’s own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard. Undergrad; no first years: PQ Hum and either a theatre or a film course.

Brecht and Beyond

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:15

20800

=ENGL 24400, CMST 26200, TAPS28435

Undergraduate

Autumn

2011-2012

L Kruger

PQ: TAPS and/or Hum Core required; no first years. Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920's to the agitprop Lehrstück to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Soyinka, Ngugi, and various South African theatre practitioners). We will also consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht's own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard.

Before and after Beckett: Theater and Film

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

20801

=CMST 24203/44203, ENGL 24401/44506

Undergraduate

Spring

2009-2010

Loren Kruger

PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing, and at least one prior course in modern drama or film. This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in Comparative Literature. Working knowledge of French helpful but not required. Beckett is conventionally typed as the playwright of minimalist scenes of unremitting bleakness. But his experiments with theater and film echo the irreverent play of popular culture (vaudeville on stage and film, including Chaplin and Keaton) and the artistic avant-garde (Dreyer in film; Jarry and Artaud in theater). This course juxtaposes this early twentieth-century work with Beckett's plays on stage and screen, as well as those of his contemporaries (Ionesco, Duras) and successors. Contemporary authors depend on availability but may include Vinaver, Minyana, and Lagarce (France); Pinter and Greenaway (England); and Foreman and Wellman (United States). Theoretical work may include texts by Artaud, Barthes, Derrida, Josette Feral, Peggy Phelan, and Bert States.

Literature and Technology: Machines, Humans, and the Novel

Submitted by ldzoells on Wed, 2017-03-22 09:50

21200

PORT 28818, ITAL 28818

Undergraduate

Winter

2017-2018

Ana Ilievska

In his Scienza Nuova (New Science), Giambattista Vico writes that "the Egyptians reduced all preceding world time to three ages; namely, the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of men." What the Egyptians and Vico could not have predicted was that history had yet another age in store: the age of the machine. Carlyle baptized, Marx outlined it, Heidegger warned against it; Deleuze and Guattari proclaimed that "everything is a machine"; and Ted Kaczynski even went as far as to kill in order to free human beings from the "technological slavery" the machine age had purportedly brought about. And yet, as Heidegger wrote, "everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it." So what is technology? What impact did it have on human beings and on the writing of literature as the Industrial Revolution exploded onto the European continent? In this course we will pose anew the question concerning technology within the one field that Heidegger deemed akin to the essence of technology: art, and by deduction, literature. Together, we will trace the ecological, economical, and emotional footprints of various machines and technological devices (automata, trains, phonographs, cameras). We will delve into the topic with Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, continue with a reflection on the human being as a machine (Frankenstein and Pinocchio), transition to accounts on cities, progress, and machines (Dickens, Zola, Eça de Queirós), and end with the Futurists' technological extravaganzas that will include a visit to Chicago's Art Institute. Other readings include texts by Marx, Raymond Williams, Heidegger, Leo Marx, Deleuze & Guattari, etc.

The Woman in Modern Greek Literature

Submitted by isagor on Tue, 2017-11-07 12:32

21209

MOGK 21000; GNSE 21209, CLCV 22517

Undergraduate

Spring

2017-2018

Chrysanthi Koutsiviti

This course aims to reveal the woman and her world or what the society claims to be this world through prose and poetry written in different historical periods in Greece. The works chosen are part of major contemporary Greek literature and interact with culture, history and social ideas of the country. They represent three different periods: the beginning of the 20th century, the years of dictatorship (1967-1974) and the period after the dictatorship until today. They all have a big impact on Greek literature and they all have drawn the interest of excellent translators in English. The works are offering the opportunity to observe the changes in women’ s position in Greece, and mostly to analyze major works examining the inner nature of the human being.

The texts will be taught in English. No knowledge of Modern Greek is required. However, students with such knowledge are encouraged to study the text in Modern Greek, as well, since the chosen editions are bilingual.

Latino/a Intellectual Thought

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21401

=ENGL 22804, GNDR 22401, LACS 22804, SPAN 22801

Undergraduate

Autumn

2008-2009

Ral Coronado

This course traces the history of Latina/o intellectual work that helped shape contemporary Latina/o cultural studies. Our focus is on how Chicanas/os and Puerto Ricans have theorized the history, society, and culture of Latinas/os in the United States. Themes include folklore and anthropology, cultural nationalism, postcolonialism, literary and cultural studies, community activism, feminism, sexuality, and the emergence of a pan-Latino culture. Throughout, we pay attention to the convergences and divergences of Chicana/o and Puerto Rican studies, especially as contemporary practitioners have encouraged us to (re)think Latina/o studies in a comparative framework.

Latino/a Intellectual Thought

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21401

=ENGL 22804, GNDR 22401, LACS 22804, SPAN 22801

Undergraduate

Spring

2007-2008

Ral Coronado

This course traces the history of Latina/o intellectual work that helped shape contemporary Latina/o cultural studies. Our focus is on how Chicanas/os and Puerto Ricans have theorized the history, society, and culture of Latinas/os in the United States. Themes include folklore and anthropology, cultural nationalism, postcolonialism, literary and cultural studies, community activism, feminism, sexuality, and the emergence of a pan-Latino culture. Throughout, we pay attention to the convergences and divergences of Chicana/o and Puerto Rican studies, especially as contemporary practitioners have encouraged us to (re)think Latina/o studies in a comparative framework.

Introduction to Narratology

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21403

=GRMN 21411, FREN 21411

Undergraduate

Spring

2010-2011

Sandra Janssen

The first part of this course is designed as an overview of some major theories of narrative. We will focus on structuralist approaches such as those of Roland Barthes and Grard Genette's, but also discuss texts such as Benjamin's analysis of the narrator, Bakhtin's theory of polyphony, and new approaches to narratology in the field of cognitive poetics. In the second part, we will analyze literary examples taken especially from German and French literature from the 18th to the 20th century. A special emphasis will lie on different narrative representations of consciousness, in free indirect speech (Flaubert), the stream of consciousness (Joyce), or narrative styles that try to render more visual forms of consciousness (Musil). Finally, we will consider some experimental forms of narrative from the later 20th century (Queneau, Perec, D. Grossman).

Introduction to Narratology

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21403

=GRMN 21411

Undergraduate

Winter

2010-2011

Sandra Janssen

The first part of this course is designed as an overview of some major theories of narrative. We will focus on structuralist approaches such as those of Roland Barthes and Gérard Genette's, but also discuss texts such as Benjamin's analysis of the narrator, Bakhtin's theory of polyphony, and new approaches to narratology in the field of cognitive poetics. In the second part, we will analyze literary examples taken especially from German and French literature from the 18th to the 20th century. A special emphasis will lie on different narrative representations of consciousness, in free indirect speech (Flaubert), the stream of consciousness (Joyce), or narrative styles that try to render more visual forms of consciousness (Musil). Finally, we will consider some experimental forms of narrative from the later 20th century (Queneau, Perec, D. Grossman).

Comparative Fairy Tale

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21600

=GRMN 28500, NORW 28500

Undergraduate

Spring

2010-2011

Kimberly Kenny

For some, fairy tales count as sacred tales meant to enchant rather than to edify. For others, they are cautionary tales, replete with obvious moral lessons. Critics have come to apply all sorts of literary approaches to fairy tale texts, ranging from stylistic analyses to psychoanalytical and feminist readings. For the purposes of this course, we assume that these critics are correct in their contention that fairy tales contain essential underlying meanings. We conduct our own readings of fairy tales from the German Brothers Grimm, the Norwegians, Asbjørnsen and Moe, and the Dane, Hans Christian Andersen. We rely on our own critical skills as well as on selected secondary readings. All work in English.

In this course, we compare familiar examples from three national traditions of the fairy tale, those of the Brothers Grimm (German) and H. C. Anderson (Danish), and the less familiar Norwegian tradition of Asbjørnsen and Moe.

Empire and Intimacy: Race and Sexual Fantasy in European Literature

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21601

=ENGL 18105, GNDR 21603, ISHU 21601

Undergraduate

Spring

2007-2008

Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud

This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in Comparative Literature. This course critically examines European fascination with non-Western peoples, their bodies and sexual practices from the late Renaissance to the 20th century. Along with select incursions into visual art and film, the class will focus on English and French literature that imagines cross-cultural contact in its most shocking form: interracial sexuality. We will try to assess the political questions - race fetishism, the ethics of desire, economic exploitation, to name but a few - these representations provoke. In addition to this literary output, we will examine European proto-anthropology that detailed the sexual aberrations of subaltern peoples. We will consider the role both types of discourses had in stimulating interest in imperial exploration and how the logic of territorial capture dovetailed with the masculinist metaphor of sexual conquest. We will take recent contributions by postcolonial, feminist, queer and Marxist critics as a starting point for discussion and for formulating our own views on this problematic. All works will be available in English, but students with a reading knowledge of French will be encouraged to read French works in the original. Literature to be read includes works by Shakespeare, Behn, Diderot, Byron, C. Bront, Haggard, Gide and Forster.

Poetics of Dislocation

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21701

=ENGL 25922/43706

Undergraduate

Winter

2009-2010

Jennifer Scappettone

This course explores crises of placelessness and displacement as modern and contemporary verse has attempted to map them: from modernist cosmopolitan collage to poetry of exile, migration, and diaspora, the work we will study, lodged between tongues, gives traction to discourse surrounding the abstraction of space in globalizing contexts. We will examine the formal and social prompts and repercussions of experiments in polylingualism, dialect, creole, barbarism, and thwarted translation; we will delve ultimately into some examples of poetic reckoning with the transformation of the site of reading, in the form of new media, installation and otherwise ambient poetics. Poets to include William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, John Ashbery, Amelia Rosselli, Andrea Zanzotto, Paul Celan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Pamela Lu, Etel Adnan, M. Nourbese Philip, C.S. Giscombe, Édouard Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite, Caroline Bergvall. Readings in geography, aesthetics, translation by David Harvey, James Clifford, Marc Auge, Rem Koolhaas, Timothy Morton, Toni Morrison, Lucy Lippard, Juliana Spahr, others.

Nowhere Lands: Utopia, Dystopia, and Afterlife of Empire

Submitted by vickylim on Wed, 2015-02-11 12:45

21702

Undergraduate

Autumn

2015-2016

Leah Feldman

Otherworldly, fantastic and futuristic spaces often offer a forum for social critique or a window into the formation of systems of knowledge. This course examines the ways in which the experiences of empire, revolution and globalization produced utopian and dystopian spaces that challenged the boundaries of the human and society. While utopia has a long history in European literature and thought, this course will focus on the ways in which space is constructed outside of the imperial centers of the west including a selection of novels and films from Eastern Europe, Central/West Asia and the Middle East.

Intercultural Adaptation: Kurosawa and his Russian Sources

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2015-04-27 12:27

21704

REES 29810

Undergraduate

Autumn

2015-2016

Olga Solovieva

Focusing on Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, Tolstoy’s short novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Gorky's drama "The Night Asylum," and Arseniev's travel narrative Dersu Uzala, we will analyze these texts and their film counterparts in the context of Japanese postwar cinema. The course is meant to provide hands-on training in the interdisciplinary methodology of Comparative Literature, through close analysis of films, texts, and their relationships.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:15

21800

=ENGL 20900, RLST 28301

Undergraduate

Winter

2011-2012

M Murrin

This course will concentrate on works of the “classic” period (1930s-60s). It will, however, begin with representative authors from the nineteenth century like Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard, as well as some from the early twentieth century like David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus and H. P. Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness. Worth special attention will be authors like C. S. Lewis and Ursula LeGuin who worked in both genres at a time when they were often contrasted. The two major texts which will be discussed will be one from each genre, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Herbert's Dune. Theory will be historical, that held by the authors or applied to their stories within the period. Most of the texts we will read come from the Anglo-American tradition with some significant exceptions like short works by Kafka and Borges.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

21800

=ENGL 20900

Undergraduate

Winter

2007-2008

Michael Murrin

This course concentrates on works of the classic period (from the 1930s to the 1960s). It does, however, begin with representative authors from the nineteenth century (e.g., Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard), as well as some works from the early twentieth century (e.g., David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus , H. P. Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness ). Worth special attention are authors (e.g., C. S. Lewis and Ursula LeGuin) who worked in both genres at a time when they were often contrasted. The two major texts discussed include one from each genre (i.e., Tolkien's Lord of the Rings , Herbert's Dune ). Most texts come from the Anglo-American tradition, with some significant exceptions (e.g., short works by Kafka and Borges).

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2012-10-08 14:14

21906

FNDL 21906

Undergraduate

Spring

2012-2013

Haun Saussy

A reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945) with appropriate reference to its philosophical, psychological and even fictional predecessors. The course should be of interest to those working in the philosophy of consciousness, mind-body relations, critical theory, history of science, and even ethics and aesthetics. Reading ability in French encouraged but not required; we will use the original text and the translation by Colin Smith.

The Global South Asian Diaspora in Literature and Film

Submitted by vickylim on Wed, 2014-11-12 14:35

21970

CRES 21907

Undergraduate

Winter

2014-2015

Chandani Patel

The migration of peoples from South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan)abroad is usually divided into two distinct strands: the first is centered on the migration ofindentured laborers in the late 19th century to locales in Africa, Southeast Asia, and theCaribbean, while the second takes shape around the post-1960s migration of South Asians to theUK, USA, and Canada. Scholars whose work focuses on the various communities of SouthAsians in all of these places use the word “diaspora” as one that links these groups together. Theterm itself is of Greek origin, meaning to scatter or disperse, and in its earliest usages referred tothe dispersal of the Jewish community exiled from its homeland. But in its expanded use,“diaspora” refers to communities of people who share a common national or ethnic origin, andoften, but not always, a common language and religious belief. This course takes up literary andcinematic representations of the global South Asian diaspora in order to analyze how they createnarratives about diasporic experiences across historical periods and around the globe. How dothese texts represent the experiences of dislocation, marginalization, and acculturation usuallyassociated with migration? How do the ideas of home, longing, and belonging shift throughoutthese texts? How do distinct historical, social, cultural and political parameters impact both thewriting and reading of these texts? Can we, and should we try to, read these multifaceted voicesof the South Asian diaspora together? To answer these questions, the course will draw on avariety of perspectives from literature, history, and sociology and evaluate issues, such as gender,politics, generational conflict, race, class, and transnational encounters as they pertain to thecourse material. The texts under consideration will include novels by Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri,and Monica Ali and films by Mira Nair and Gurinder Chadha, among others.

Magic Realist and Fantastic Writings from the Balkans

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2012-10-22 13:35

22201

32201

SOSL 27400/37400

Undergraduate

Spring

2012-2013

Angelina Ilieva

In this course, we ask whether there is such a thing as a "Balkan" type of magic realism and think about the differences between the genres of magic realism and the fantastic, while reading some of the most interesting writing to have come out of the Balkans. We also look at the similarities of the works from different countries (e.g., lyricism of expression, eroticism, nostalgia) and argue for and against considering such similarities constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility.

Nature in/as Literature

Submitted by isagor on Fri, 2017-06-16 12:40

22380

Undergraduate

Spring

2017-2018

David Orsbon

It seems self-evident that the world we live in influence our literatures and languages. The question is, How? On the other hand, nature itself is a kind of literature, and in more ways than one. From one point of view, nature writes itself when coastlines shift and mountains erode. But there are at least two other ways in which nature is a kind of literature. One of these stories is written by scientists and environmental historians, who take data acquired and use it to reconstruct narratives of environmental change. At the same time, there is another (and some would say, an especially urgent) story of nature, which is being etched into the natural world by bulldozers, bridges, and dynamite. Just like more traditional forms of nature writing, these other narratives of the environment are as much a form of literature as any other, and since humans have a role, not only in shaping the natural world, but also in telling its story, humans are the coauthors of the story of our planet in more than one sense.

This course is an introduction to the history of the concept of nature, ecocriticism, and environmental history. We will discuss issues and topics such as: relationships between nature and literature, ecofeminism, literary/textual ecosystems, environmental ethics, narratives of rise/collapse, animal studies, urban studies, ecolinguistics, and human-environment interactions.

US Latino Literary Intellectual History: Subject to Citizen

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:15

22401

=ENGL 228/42815, CRES 22815, GNDR 22802, LACS 22815

Undergraduate

Autumn

2011-2012

R Coronado

Reading knowledge of Spanish and French helpful. How does one go from being a subject of the king to becoming a citizen? From where does one acquire the language to think of equality? In the late eighteenth century, many revolutionary Spaniards and Spanish Americans travelled throughout the Atlantic world seeking to make the philosophy of equality a reality and gain independence of the Spanish colonies. They travelled to and from Europe and Spanish America; and on to New Orleans, Charleston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York. Through their voyages, these individuals would bring this new political language of rights to the places they visited, imbibing of this political philosophy by reading and through conversations and discussions. They produced, as well, a plethora of publications and writings that circulated throughout the Atlantic world. Through lecture and discussion, students in this interdisciplinary course learn of these individuals, their circuits of travel, and their desire to create a modern world. Our focus is on the communities, individuals, and texts that were published and circulated in what is today the United States. We begin with the late eighteenth century and work our way through the nineteenth century. Classes conducted in English; most texts in English.

U.S. Literary and Intellectual History: From Subject to Citizen

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

22401

=ENGL 22815, CRES 22815, LACS 22815

Undergraduate

Autumn

2010-2011

Raul Coronado

How does one go from being a subject of the King to becoming a citizen? From where does one acquire the language to think of equality? In the late eighteenth century, many revolutionary Spaniards and Spanish Americans travelled throughout the Atlantic world seeking to make the philosophy of equality a reality and gain independence of the Spanish colonies. They travelled to and from Europe and Spanish America; and on to New Orleans, Charleston, DC, Philadelphia, and New York. Through their voyages, these individuals would bring this new political language of rights to the places they visited, imbibing of this political philosophy by reading and through conversations and discussions. They produced, as well, a plethora of publications and writings that circulated throughout the Atlantic world. Through lecture and class discussion, we'll learn of these individuals, their circuits of travel, and their desire to create a modern world. Our focus will be on the communities, individuals, and texts that were published and circulated in what is today the United States. We'll begin with the late eighteenth century and work our way through the nineteenth century. The course will be interdisciplinary. Lecture, discussion, and most of the readings will be in English. Spanish and French reading skills will be useful.

Money and Literature

Submitted by vickylim on Fri, 2012-01-13 15:39

22504

GNSE 22504

Undergraduate

Spring

2011-2012

Tamara Chin

This course explores a set of imaginative, anthropological, and economic writings about money. Topics will include economic rhetoric and genres, market values, housework, and ancient and modern economies. We will read Gide’s The Counterfeiters, Adiga’s White Tiger, biographies of coins, Chinese economic dialogues, and watch an episode of Suze Orman’s Money Class. Critical readings will include Mauss, Simmel, Marx, Goux, Rubin, Spivak.

A Social History of the Poet in the Arab and Islamic World

Submitted by amrisi on Mon, 2018-01-22 14:48

22609

HIST 22609, NEHC 20745

Undergraduate

Spring

2017-2018

Basil Salem

What constitutes a poet? What role does a poet play in society? Can we think of poets as agents of change? If so, in what capacity? This course asks the student to consider the role of the poet in the shaping of Islamic history. The course traces the changing role of the poet and of poetry in Islamic history with a focus on Arabic poetry (in translation) in the early modern and modern Middle East and North Africa. From early modern mystical poets, to modern Arab nationalist poets, to the street poets of the Arab Spring, the course investigates the role and function of the poet as an agent of change and of poetry as a catalyst for the formation of collective identity. To do this the course also explores the variety of mediums through which poetry was transmitted and remembered. We will thus consider the role of orality, aurality, and memory in the creation, preservation, and transmission of poetry in the early modern and modern Arabic-speaking world.

We will explore new tendencies in the cinema of Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries such as Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. Under analysis will be recent productions in a variety of formats and genres such as fiction and documentary, publicity, and TV series. We will assess the contributions of these cinematic objects to contemporary socio-political discourse focusing both on the Portuguese-speaking world and beyond. Course conducted in English.

Twentieth Century Literature from the Balkans

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23101

=SOSL 26500/36500

Undergraduate

Autumn

2007-2008

Angelina Ilieva

In this course, we will examine the works of major writers from former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine how their works grapple with the issues of national identity and their countries' place in the Balkans and in Europe, with the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, with socialism and its demise, with emigration, as well as simply with the modern experience of being. We will compare the conceptual and mythic categories through which these works make sense of the world and argue for and against considering such categories constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility. The readings will include works by Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andri, Norman Manea, Mesa Selimovi, Danilo Kis, Miroslav Krlea, Ismail Kadare and others.

Trans Performativity

Submitted by isagor on Wed, 2017-09-06 10:57

23112

GNSE 23112, ENGL 23112

Undergraduate

Autumn

2017-2018

Wolfson

In this course we will explore how these dialogues and conflicts between gender studies, queer theory, and trans studies have developed and transformed our understandings of categories like “gender,” “sex” and “trans.” Some guiding questions will be: how do we, and should we, conceive the materiality of the body? How do assumptions about ‘nature’ and the ‘natural’ determine how we view categories of identity, and what are the political ramifications of these determinations? Why, within certain discourses, has the fluidity of gender been promoted, while the fluidity of race remains controversial and generally unsupported? How do we account for these different receptions, and what kind of opportunities do they make available for politically engaged communities? How can we simultaneously value performative theories of gender, while also maintaining a certain stability of identity as developed within trans criticism, even when these two discourses seem in direct conflict?

Returning the Gaze: The Balkans and Western Europe

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23201

=SOSL 27200/37200

Undergraduate

Autumn

2007-2008

Angelina Ilieva

This course will investigate the complex relationship between South East European self-representations and the imagined Western gaze for whose benefit the nations stage their quest for identity and their aspirations for recognition. We will focus on the problems of Orientalism, Balkanism and nesting orientalisms, as well as on self-mythologization and self-exoticization. We will also think about differing models of masculinity, and of the figure of the gypsy as a metaphor for the national self in relation to the West. The course will conclude by considering the role that the imperative to belong to Western Europe played in the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s.

Balkan Folklore

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2012-10-22 13:26

23301

SOSL 26800

Undergraduate

Winter

2012-2013

Angelina Ilieva

Immerse yourself in the magic world of vampires and dragons, bagpipes and uneven beats, quick-step circle dance. This course give an introduction to Balkan folklore from anthropological, historical/political, and performative perspectives. We become acquainted with folk tales, lyric and epic songs, music, and dance. The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who developed their theory of oral composition through work among epic singers in the Balkans, helps us understand folk tradition as a dynamic process – how is oral tradition transmitted, preserved, changed, forgotten? how do illiterate singers learn their long narrative poems, how do musicians learn to play? We consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. The historical/political part will survey the emergence of folklore studies as a discipline as well as the ways it has served in the formation and propagation of the nation in the Balkans. The class will also experience this living tradition first hand through our in-class workshop with the Chicago based dance ensemble “Balkanski igri.” The Annual Balkan Folklore Spring Festival will be held in March at the International House.

Balkan Folklore

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23301

=NEHC 20568/30568, SOSL 26800/36800

Undergraduate

Winter

2010-2011

Angelina Ilieva

This course is an overview of Balkan folklore from ethnographic, anthropological, historical/political, and performative perspectives. We become acquainted with folk tales, lyric and epic songs, music, and dance. The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who developed their theory of oral composition through work among epic singers in the Balkans, help us understand folk tradition as a dynamic process. We also consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. We also experience this living tradition first hand through our visit to the classes and rehearsals of the Chicago-based ensemble Balkanske igre.

Directors and Directing: Theory, Stage, Text

Submitted by isagor on Fri, 2017-06-16 12:37

23305

TAPS 23305, ENGL 23305

Undergraduate

Spring

2017-2018

Michal Peles-Almagor

Theatre has always needed the concept of directing when staging a play. However, the role of the director as we know it has emerged only with the beginning of modern drama. This course will investigate the role of the director as an intersection between text, theory, and performance. The course explores the impact of the director in shaping modern drama, as well as critical approaches of literary and theatrical theory. We will deal not only with the historical development of the director’s role and textual interpretation, but also with the dynamics between theory and practice, and the changes in the concepts of space, acting, and performing. We will focus on approaches and writings by André Antoine, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Konstantin Stanislavski, Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt, Jacques Copeau, Leopold Jessner, Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett. We will examine these approaches in relation to literary theories of performativity (John Austin, John Searle, Judith Butler, Mikhail Bakhtin). We will also be interested in testing whether these theories match the practice, and discuss the potential of constructing a theory of acting, performing, and directing today.

The Burden of History: A Nation and its Lost Paradise

Submitted by vickylim on Mon, 2012-10-22 13:27

23401

SOSL 27300

Undergraduate

Winter

2012-2013

Angelina Ilieva

How and why do national identities provoke the deep emotional attachments that they do? In this course we try to understand these emotional attachments by examining the narrative of loss and redemption through which most nations in the Balkans retell their Ottoman past. We begin by considering the mythic temporality of the Romantic national narrative while focusing on specific national literary texts where the national past is retold through the formula of original wholeness, foreign invasion, Passion, and Salvation. We then proceed to unpack the structural role of the different elements of that narrative. With the help of Žižek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma, we think about the national fixation on the trauma of loss, and the role of trauma in the formation of national consciousness. Specific theme inquiries involve the figure of the Janissary as self and other, brotherhood and fratricide, and the writing of the national trauma on the individual physical body. Special attention is given to the general aesthetic of victimhood, the casting of the victimized national self as the object of the “other’s perverse desire.” With the help of Freud, Žižek and Kant we consider the transformation of national victimhood into the sublimity of the national self. The main primary texts include Petar Njegoš’ Mountain Wreath (Serbia and Montenegro), Ismail Kadare’s The Castle (Albania), Anton Donchev’s Time of Parting (Bulgaria).

The Burden of History: A Nation and Its Lost Paradise

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23401

=SOSL 27300/37300

Undergraduate

Spring

2008-2009

Angelina Ilieva

We will look at the narrative of loss and redemption through which Balkan countries retell the Ottoman past. With the help of Freud‚s analysis of masochistic desire and Zizek's theory of the subject as constituted by trauma, we will contemplate the national fixation on the trauma of loss and the dynamic between victimhood and sublimity. The figure of the Janissary will highlight the significance of the other in the definition of the self. Some possible texts are Petar Njego'‚ Mountain Wreath, Ismail Kadare's The Castle, and Anton Donchev's Time of Parting.

Theories of the Novel

Submitted by vickylim on Fri, 2015-01-30 15:01

23415

ENGL 23415

Undergraduate

Spring

2014-2015

Lawrence Rothfield

Theories of the Novel: This course explores some of the fundamental conceptual issues raised by novels: in what way do plot, character, and authorial intention function in the novel, as opposed to other genres? How are novels formally unified (if they are)? What special problems are associated with beginnings and endings of novels? How do such basic features as titles and chapter divisions contribute to novelistic meanings? What are the ideological presuppositions – about gender, race, class, but also about the nature of social reality, of historicity, and of modernity -- inherent in a novelistic view? What ethical practices and structures of affect do novels encourage?

Gender and Literature in South Asia

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23500

=GNDR 23001/33001, SALC 23002/33002

Undergraduate

Spring

2008-2009

Valerie Ritter

Prior knowledge of South Asia not required. This course investigates representations of gender and sexuality, especially of females and the feminine in South Asian literature (i.e., from areas now included in the nations of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). Topics include classical Indian literature and sexual motifs, the female voice as a devotional/literary stance, gendered nationalism, the feminist movements, class and gender, and women's songs. Texts in English.

Gender and Literature in South Asia

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23500

=GNDR 23001/33001, SALC 23002/33002

Undergraduate

Spring

2006-2007

Valerie Ritter

Prior knowledge of South Asia not required. This course investigates representations of gender and sexuality, especially of females and the feminine in South Asian literature (i.e., from areas now included in the nations of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). Topics include classical Indian literature and sexual motifs, the female voice as a devotional/literary stance, gendered nationalism, the feminist movements, class and gender, and women's songs. Texts in English.

Rivalry, Glory, and Death: Competition and Manliness in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-09-06 13:11

23601

=CLCV 24108, GNDR 24102, HUMA 24108

Undergraduate

Winter

2008-2009

Aaron Seider

This course explores the complex relationship between competition and manliness in Greco-Roman antiquity. We will examine a diverse range of examples of competition in the hopes of arriving at a deeper understanding of how manliness was defined, contested, and won in the time period ranging from archaic Greece to Augustan Rome. The course will consider questions such as whether the characteristics of manliness change over time or remain static; how the type of competition impacts the values at stake; whether it is necessary that manly acts be narrated by a poet or witnessed by spectators; and what dangers are tied to making the transition to manhood. We will explore such issues through a wide selection of literary representations of competition, ranging from the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in Homer's Iliad to Cicero's invective against Marc Antony in his Philippics; and from the athletic hymns of Pindar and Bacchylides to the poetic contests between shepherds in Theocritean and Vergilian pastoral. Other authors to be considered include Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus, Catullus, and Ovid. All texts will be read in translation. Material evidence, such as monuments and statues, will also be examined. The course will close with a brief consideration of the modern reception of ancient competition and manliness, focusing in particular on the nineteenth century rebirth of the Olympics and the 1936 Berlin games.